Transcripts on Feeling & Emotion

Q1: I come from the States, and my question is about my connection to our society. I’ve never been political but I feel a sense of connection and therefore would like to be part of moving things in a more positive direction than I see happening politically. It feels hard to address without being angry about what’s going on, yet it doesn’t feel right not to address it.

John: In addressing it, by coming from a place within you that doesn’t relate to lack: relating from a fundamental goodness within...

John: For one month, live your life without having any personal opinions. Your judgments come from your opinions. For one month have no opinions about your self, no opinions about others, and during that month live in openness where opinions used to be. Live for one month without any personal opinions and you’ll see how much room there is, within, for you to breathe.

Q: So for one month, no speaking or thinking about personal opinions?..

Q: My question is about pleasure, pain and guilt. I’ve recently noticed that I’m experiencing a lot more pleasure running through my body but I seem to believe it’s sinful. I feel guilty and then create physical pain in my body. For example, making love can feel wonderful and fulfilling, but the next day I won’t be able to see properly or I’ll have physical pain. It’s the same if I enjoy dancing. I’d love more understanding around this.

John: For pleasure to become stable requires a stable opening of the heart...

Q: Lately I’ve been experiencing a lot of anxiety and heaviness in my chest. It sometimes seems connected to events in the world. I’ve gone through and through my thoughts and emotions to see where it might come from and I can trace it back to a sense of separation from God. Yet after all that work, the anxiety is still here. What do you suggest?

John: The anxiety comes from your way of being within your self. If you have anxiety, particularly a deeper level of anxiety that’s difficult to pinpoint the source of, that tells you about your relationship with your self…

Q: My question is about love. I know to give love, and that’s easy for me around children and women, but when I’m in a deep relationship with a man it shifts and I want to receive love, which doesn’t work. I don’t understand why the giving of love stops in this way.

John: It’s also really the same with others; it just doesn’t show as much. The lack is not just there with men. It’s there with everything. For you, it just manifests more quickly with men…

Q: Hi. Since I spoke with you in India, it seems it’s easier to access and respond to what I know deep down in my heart, which I love, but at the same time it seems that everything is different. I can’t pinpoint exactly what’s changed, but everything seems different. It’s like all my reference points have gone. Why is that? It’s quite unsettling in a way.

John: When you responded to come deeply into your heart, you opened and you knew much more…

Q: A week ago I shared with you that I felt higher frequency in my belly, and you said it was deeper willingness which hadn’t integrated in my self. Last week when I was walking in the park, I felt a similar frequency in my body and yesterday in my feet and now while I’m sitting here, that frequency is in my feet and in my hands. Is this frequency also relating to deeper willingness?

John: Indirectly. It started with deeper willingness and then you didn’t stop it…

John: A deeper sense is a non-cognitive process and it’s also not a common sense. A deeper sense is when something is not clear with a cognitive sense or common sense, so you go to a deeper sense. If you don’t have clarity about something on any level and you need to have some clarity, then you go to a deeper sense. It’s a level in which you’ll have very little to go by but just a touch of something in one direction…

Q: Hello, I’ve been dealing with trying to change habits, habits that no longer work for me, you know, being lazy, indolent, stuff like that, and I’m just wondering if you have some advice or instruction on how to drop habits. Thank you.

John: Changing a habit is, in principle, very simple. As awareness, be and do only what you know the truth of in your heart. What immediately complicates that is efforting to do that for the sake of anything that you experience in your self…

Q: Hi John. My question is, does emotion exist in being or is it a construct of self?

John: It doesn’t exist in being. It’s a dense form that offers you more form. Positive emotion very easily has heart in it. Negative emotion has only the experience of your unintegrated self. It has no heart in it. When you experience the separating power of negative emotion, that can turn you against all of your emotion, but as soon as you return to your heart, there’s going to be an expression of that in your self, and the expression of that is going to come through positive emotion…